Not much has eluded Tim McCanna at the racetrack.
It’s been three decades since the Spokane native got his horse trainer’s license, and in that time McCanna has compiled an impressive record at Emerald Downs. McCanna has racked up 10 training titles while becoming the winningest trainer in track history with an impressive 794 wins.
McCanna, 49, also is fourth on the Emerald Downs’ all-time stakes wins list with 29, and in 2008 he was awarded the Top Training Achievement for his record 66 wins during the meet.
His list of achievements at the track is so impressive that this weekend he will be inducted into the Washington Racing Hall of Fame.
“It’s kind of a humbling thing because I’ve never thought of myself that way,” the affable McCanna said. “You look at everybody else in there, they’re all the guys I grew up watching in awe.”
But for McCanna, there remains some unfinished business, one track milestone that escapes him. He has never won the prestigious Longacres Mile, the Northwest’s $200,000 Grade III jewel that runs for the 76th time Sunday on the Auburn oval.
McCanna looks to move Saratoga Boot – owned by Gary Hughes and ridden by jockey JoeCrispin – into the winner’s circle by besting returning Mile winners such as Noosa Beach, Wasserman, Assessment and other contenders. So far this season, Saratoga Boot has snagged a third in the Budweiser Handicap and a fourth in the Mt. Rainier Handicap. (Pictured: Saratoga Boot galloped to a convincing 4 1/4-length win in last year’s Emerald Derby.)
“It’s as tough a race as you’ll get into,” McCanna said. “Noosa Beach stands out above everyone else. Just the way the race scenario, the trip sets up, somebody is going to have to get lucky to beat him.”
McCanna’s best Mile finish was a second with Poker Brad in 2003.
Thoroughbred racing and McCanna go way back. He got his start in the 1970s, helping his father train horses at the family ranch in Spokane.
“My dad trained as a hobby,” McCanna said. “He was a school teacher and administrator in Spokane. I just started getting up early in the morning before school at about 4 o’clock to train horses. I’d do it in the summers also.”
He fondly remembers the first horse he ever trained in fifth grade, a quarter-horse named One Cute Kitty.
“We used to train her at home in the mornings, and we’d haul her to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on the weekends,” he said.
By the time he got to high school, McCanna already was immersed in the world of horse training.
“I’d do it before school,” he said. “They’d always give me a hard time because I’d come in smelling like horse liniment. But I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to train horses..”
After graduating from Gonzaga Prep, McCanna headed off to Pullman, enrolling in the veterinarian program at Washington State University. His path lay elsewhere, however.
“I just couldn’t see myself being in Pullman for nine years,” he said. “I dropped out of WSU and went to Hawaii for a while and hung out with some buddies, just being beach bums.”
After a few months of enjoying the leisurely life, McCanna received a call from his father, asking him to come home and run the family stables.
“He kind of turned the stables over to me when I was 18,” he said. “I started training then at Playfair, and it kind of took off from there. I’ve been training every day since.”
After taking over the reigns, McCanna set out to make his mark in the training business, building on lessons he learned from his father.
“My dad started out with all cheap horses, broken down horses that had problems,” McCanna said. “It really taught me how to make them better. I started thinking that I’d like to get a horse before he was beat up.”
At first, success eluded him.
“The first couple of years we went to 90 races and never won a feature race,” he said.
He soon began to concentrate on developing his own horses, and success followed.
“I started going to the yearling sales, buying horses,” he said. “And then it just kind of took off from there.”
When Emerald Downs first opened in 1996, McCanna began bringing his horses across the mountains. After Playfair stopped hosting live racing in 2000, he concentrated his efforts at the Auburn track.
These days McCanna splits his time between Emerald Downs, his farm in Yakima and tracks in California, where he also trains.
“My wife Jan does a really great job managing the farm and taking care of things,” McCanna said. “I’ve got a really great crew here (in Yakima) and we’ve got a good system.”
In the three decades since he first received his license, McCanna has enjoyed a lot of success. Yet there is always more to learn.
“It’s a never-ending process,” he said. “If you don’t learn something every day, you’re not keeping up. It’s a humbling sport. By the time you think you know what you’re doing, and ‘I’ve got this all figured out,’ well, then it will make you look like you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I think that’s something that keeps you hungry and going.”
One thing he has learned, however, is that a happy horse eager to run is a better competitor than one forced to race.
“I try to work gentle with them,” he said. “They’ve got to want to run. The old days of breaking a horse are gone. We work with them here at the farm, and I don’t take them to the track until they’re ready to do something they want to do. You don’t make them do something they don’t want to do. They run a lot better if it’s their idea. You really have to get one that wants to be a racehorse.”
McCanna continued:
“It’s getting them to run for you, it’s not making them do it,” he said. “They’re bred to run, but they have to want to do it. You just want to get them feeling good. The care we put into these horses, I wish I took that much care of myself. Their temperature is taken every day, we watch their diet, their blood is monitored. Their every care is looked after.”
Although competition on the track looks to be fierce in the Mile on Sunday, McCanna said Saratoga Beach is ready.
“I’ve got him going the way I want now,” McCanna said. “Things really hadn’t fallen together yet. He had a few little problems. He’s not really running with the same style he had, but he might get everything to come together at the right time. You can’t win it unless you’re in it.
“It’d be huge to win the Mile,” McCanna added. “It’s something I haven’t done. I have a lot more things that I want to do. That’s what’s weird about the Hall of Fame deal, because I feel like I’ve got a lot more to do.”
